Friday, July 8, 2011

As this blog is called "Kangaroos of the Scrubby Bush" and Merrilyn, an eastern grey kangaroo, is the star, we've mostly talked about kangaroos, but there are other critters here in the scrubby bush and some have been guests as joeys, so this week I thought I'd introduce you to Pepe and Joe.

Joe whispering a secret to Pepe.

Pepe and Joe are red-necked wallabies. So that begs the question - what is a wallaby? The majority, but not all, wallabies also belong to a group of marsupials we call macropods. Macropod basically means "big foot" - take a look at the back foot and you'll know why that's appropriate. All kangaroos are macropods. Kangaroos are much larger and can weigh up to 85kgs, whereas wallabies are much smaller and do not exceed about 20kgs. Wallabies tend to spend more time in forests coming into open areas only to feed, whereas kangaroos spend much more of their time in open areas. Wallabies tend to eat a much larger variety of vegetation, with kangaroos staying primarily with grasses.

Red-necked wallabies are probably the most common wallaby in the forests of east coast Australia, but we are losing many to habitat clearing, which I find so sad. I feel privileged to be able to look up from my work on the computer to see one grazing not far from my house.

Pepe and Joe both lost their mothers to cars and were teamed up to be raised together and then, when almost weaned, they came here to be released. They really were a couple of characters, particularly Joe.

Joe loved to sit in a chair!

Cuddling or dancing? Hard to tell.

Joe would throw himself at Pepe.

You could almost hear Joe saying "I love you Pepe"

and equally Pepe saying "Get down Joe you're embarrassing us both."

These photos were taken before Merrilyn arrived and at the point we are up to in our story they were released 24 hours from the security of the raising pen and just came in for supplementary feed as they started to move away and to make their own way in the wild. This is a shot of them a little after Bob arrived.

Don't know who Bob is? Not sure who Merrilyn is? Want to catch up with the story so far? You can do that here. I'm getting very excited about hitting the 100 follower mark - if you aren't following yet, you might be the magic 100. You can also follow the story on facebook here.

Hey there and thanks again for all the comments. Mike I was bemused by your question and if you are talking about the 3rd photo down that's the fencing to my rose garden - so keeping things out not trying to catch anything - sadly wallabies and possums love roses! (And so do I).